This island is also unique in that it is split between a Dutch side and and a French side, so sometimes the name is spelled "Sint Maartin" (Dutch) and other times "Saint-Martin" (French). The island operates under two different flags. Neither portion is a sovereign nation. Sint Maartin, the Dutch side, is a constituent of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (notice that the Netherlands has a King), and the French side is described as an "overseas collectivity of France", like the islands of French Polynesia (where Tahiti is, for example). I have ever actually been to the Netherlands (in Europe), but having now been to Sint Maartin, I have actually been to the Netherlands, just as if I had never been to the mainland of the United States, but had been to Hawaii, I nevertheless would have been to the United States.
The Kingdom of the Netherlands has other islands in the Caribbean such as the "ABC" islands, Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao--pronounced like "Kurasao", and the "SSS" islands, Saba, St. Eustatius, and the afore-mentioned Sint Maartin. I think from the point of view of tourists, Sint Maartin (and Saint-Martin) is a place of amazingly gorgeous beaches, white sand, hugely friendly people, and a delicious choice of cuisines. Perhaps for the residents of the island, the political make-up of the island is less than ideal, with maybe sometimes squabbling between the two nationalities (I don't know), but on the official tour that I took of the island as part of the cruise I want on last spring break, we were told that both sides operate in reasonable harmony and the people there are proud of that.
But I am not here to talk about the governmental aspect of Sint Maartin, but to concentrate strictly on the aspect of travel to this beautiful island, which perhaps is of special importance to an island whose economy is dependent upon tourism.
On YouTube, there are a great many videos showing the thrilling airplane landings at the Princess Juliana International Airport. Here is a clip from one that shows what I am talking about:
That beach, called Maho Beach, is a very popular beach, with white sand, and very beautiful blue water, and I am sure that part of the appeal are these insane airplane landings and also the jet blasts that occurs when the planes are taking off. People line up along the chain-link fence right before take-offs, and attempt the challenge the blasts that come out of the jet engines and hold on for dear life in the blast until they can't bear it. One woman was killed recently, by losing her grip on the fence and the air blast threw her backward and she smashed her head on a curb. The experience is somewhat different for the people waiting on the beach. The sand gets blown against them and it feels like being attacked by hornets. Apparently if you go out into the water you are beyond the affects of the jet blast.
Here in the U.S., I actually like to go to Dockweiler beach (that is, when I go to any beach around here at all), which has an allure in that it has is plenty of free parking, and the other allure is all the planes overhead coming into a landing at LAX. For some reason, I really like to see that.
When I went to Sint Maarten, I especially wanted to see the crazy plane landings overhead at the beach, as watching YouTube videos of those shockingly close landings makes me laugh and laugh--it's something that is so cool but also ridiculous, so it makes me laugh. (However, flying to Sint Maartin isn't ridiculous, as it is a great place to go...although I went their via cruise ship.)
The city tour that I had selected mentioned that we would be taken to see the famous Maho Beach airplane landings, and indeed, the tour bus did park in a parking lot in the area and all the passengers walked over to the Sunset Bar and Grill (a very jumping outdoor place with a DJ) where we were given a free rum drink (paid for by the tour company) and had the perfect vantage point of the beach and airport.
The tour guide said that we could enjoy the area for about a half hour, but needed to be back on the bus by 3:00 PM when the tour would resume. I enjoyed my rum drink and watched eagerly for the arrival of a large jet. After a while, a little Cessna came in for a landing, but it was hard to generate much excitement over that. I said to a woman standing next to me who had come in on a different cruise ship and was also waiting to see a huge jet come in, that the little Cessna just didn't do it for me, I wonder how long it would be before we'd see something really spectacular. She knew the answer, 3:00 PM. She said there was directory at the bar that showed the times of all the landings. Even though I was right there and ready to see a large plane come in for a landing, I would have to miss it because our tour guide happened to want us back on the bus at the exact time a big plane was due. I wondered why he wouldn't have consulted that schedule himself and made sure that we would be able to actually see a big jet landing? I don't give that particular tour a lot of brownie points due to that little failure.
Back on the ship, I was envious of the people who had skipped the organized tours and gotten their own taxis and explored the island, enjoyed the beaches, and yes, did battle with the overhead jets and the departing planes' jet blasts on their own. Their kids would chime in "it was a blast" even though they endured the hornet sting affect of the jet engine blasts.
What had long been the iconic flight to Sint Maartin is the Royal Dutch Airline's blue-painted Boeing 747 jumbo jets, an airline otherwise known as KLM, Koninklijke Luhtvaart Maatschappij (that's harder to write than Japanese), which really means "Royal" (you might see "kingly" in that word "koninklijke") "Aviation" "Society", "society" as used in some European languages means "company", or if a corporation (the liabilities of the officers are limited to the assets of the corporation and not their personal holdings) is usually called an "anonymous society".
Some time ago, KLM and Air France merged, which I felt was an interesting echo of Sint Maartin/Saint-Martin itself, which is a sort of merger between the Dutch and the French.
It's a nine to eleven hour air flight from Amsterdam to Sint Marten, as shown on this Google map:
A difficulty involved with this flight is the return from St. Maartin to Amsterdam. It takes quite a lot of fuel and these jumbo jets are huge and filled with an immense amount of passengers, and with St. Maartin's short runway, the quantity of the fuel it takes to go back to Amsterdam is too heavy for the plane to take off (and when you watch the take-offs, you do worry whether or not the plane could make it), so what they had been doing have been carrying a lesser amount of fuel so that they could take off, and they would then fly to another Netherland tropical destination, Curaçao, which apparently did not have this issue of a sort runway, to fill up with the requisite quantity fuel to get back to Amsterdam.
This wasn't necessarily a bad way to do it, in that many from Amsterdam were going to Curaçao anyway, so that longer trip included a stop at Sint Martin. But for those whose destination was St. Maartin to Amsterdam, they had to have a flight that was two to three hours longer than if there were on a flight directly back to Amsterdam:
So ultimately, it was determined to use newer design, smaller plains for these flights and "retire" from that route the iconic jumbo 747 jets that had provided such great service for so long...this decision was yet another "end of an era".
So what I am going to show you now are two videos of the final KLM Boeing 747 flight to Sint Martin, and then back out again on its way to Curaçao. It is fascinating to me to have something like this celebrated or understood at all, and yet I would say that for an island that has an intimate relationship with tourism, they would also have such an intimate relationship with a historically important airplane.
Here in the U.S., I actually like to go to Dockweiler beach (that is, when I go to any beach around here at all), which has an allure in that it has is plenty of free parking, and the other allure is all the planes overhead coming into a landing at LAX. For some reason, I really like to see that.
When I went to Sint Maarten, I especially wanted to see the crazy plane landings overhead at the beach, as watching YouTube videos of those shockingly close landings makes me laugh and laugh--it's something that is so cool but also ridiculous, so it makes me laugh. (However, flying to Sint Maartin isn't ridiculous, as it is a great place to go...although I went their via cruise ship.)
The city tour that I had selected mentioned that we would be taken to see the famous Maho Beach airplane landings, and indeed, the tour bus did park in a parking lot in the area and all the passengers walked over to the Sunset Bar and Grill (a very jumping outdoor place with a DJ) where we were given a free rum drink (paid for by the tour company) and had the perfect vantage point of the beach and airport.
The tour guide said that we could enjoy the area for about a half hour, but needed to be back on the bus by 3:00 PM when the tour would resume. I enjoyed my rum drink and watched eagerly for the arrival of a large jet. After a while, a little Cessna came in for a landing, but it was hard to generate much excitement over that. I said to a woman standing next to me who had come in on a different cruise ship and was also waiting to see a huge jet come in, that the little Cessna just didn't do it for me, I wonder how long it would be before we'd see something really spectacular. She knew the answer, 3:00 PM. She said there was directory at the bar that showed the times of all the landings. Even though I was right there and ready to see a large plane come in for a landing, I would have to miss it because our tour guide happened to want us back on the bus at the exact time a big plane was due. I wondered why he wouldn't have consulted that schedule himself and made sure that we would be able to actually see a big jet landing? I don't give that particular tour a lot of brownie points due to that little failure.
Back on the ship, I was envious of the people who had skipped the organized tours and gotten their own taxis and explored the island, enjoyed the beaches, and yes, did battle with the overhead jets and the departing planes' jet blasts on their own. Their kids would chime in "it was a blast" even though they endured the hornet sting affect of the jet engine blasts.
What had long been the iconic flight to Sint Maartin is the Royal Dutch Airline's blue-painted Boeing 747 jumbo jets, an airline otherwise known as KLM, Koninklijke Luhtvaart Maatschappij (that's harder to write than Japanese), which really means "Royal" (you might see "kingly" in that word "koninklijke") "Aviation" "Society", "society" as used in some European languages means "company", or if a corporation (the liabilities of the officers are limited to the assets of the corporation and not their personal holdings) is usually called an "anonymous society".
Some time ago, KLM and Air France merged, which I felt was an interesting echo of Sint Maartin/Saint-Martin itself, which is a sort of merger between the Dutch and the French.
It's a nine to eleven hour air flight from Amsterdam to Sint Marten, as shown on this Google map:
A difficulty involved with this flight is the return from St. Maartin to Amsterdam. It takes quite a lot of fuel and these jumbo jets are huge and filled with an immense amount of passengers, and with St. Maartin's short runway, the quantity of the fuel it takes to go back to Amsterdam is too heavy for the plane to take off (and when you watch the take-offs, you do worry whether or not the plane could make it), so what they had been doing have been carrying a lesser amount of fuel so that they could take off, and they would then fly to another Netherland tropical destination, Curaçao, which apparently did not have this issue of a sort runway, to fill up with the requisite quantity fuel to get back to Amsterdam.
This wasn't necessarily a bad way to do it, in that many from Amsterdam were going to Curaçao anyway, so that longer trip included a stop at Sint Martin. But for those whose destination was St. Maartin to Amsterdam, they had to have a flight that was two to three hours longer than if there were on a flight directly back to Amsterdam:
So ultimately, it was determined to use newer design, smaller plains for these flights and "retire" from that route the iconic jumbo 747 jets that had provided such great service for so long...this decision was yet another "end of an era".
So what I am going to show you now are two videos of the final KLM Boeing 747 flight to Sint Martin, and then back out again on its way to Curaçao. It is fascinating to me to have something like this celebrated or understood at all, and yet I would say that for an island that has an intimate relationship with tourism, they would also have such an intimate relationship with a historically important airplane.
First is a video showing the crowd on Maho Beach excitedly waiting for this "final arrival" of the KLM 747 at Princess Juliana International Airport. At first the plane is seen over to the left but it has to complete a circling around in order to get into the proper position for the careful landing, so there is a period in there where it is all about waiting (you can enjoy the beautiful blue of the wonderful ocean there), but then the crowd is thrilled when the plane arrives for its final touchdown at Juliana. I love the excitement of the crowd:
Link to 747 Arrival
This second video shows the landing and then the subsequent emotional take-off for the historically final flight from Sint Martin to Curaçao. I am personally blown away by how exquisitely beautiful, graceful, and long that plane is, and the blue paint scheme can hardly be beat. I've seen these plans before, of course, many times, but somehow you never really get to see them this clearly when you are a passenger, seeing the plane at an angle from a waiting room window, or entering them from the gangway straight off the terminal gate. I also never fully appreciated how many windows there are, and they go all the way up to the plane's nose. I never was in the upper deck, and that was where the pilots were, too.
That water spray that the plane goes through as it taxis to the runway, at first I thought maybe they were "washing" the plane, but then I decided it was a respectful salute in honor of the plane's long and valuable service. I enjoy hearing the conversation of between the pilot and the men in the tower, seeing the pilots wave from the windshield and the Bye Bye sign in the cockpit window. The pilots express their appreciation to the crowed waiting on the sand, and the man in the tower tells the pilots that they will be missed. There is the take-off with the huge blast of air and the people at the fence and on the beach attempt to hang on. There is such a sense of nostalgia as the plane lifts off and curves away from the island, the very last one of its so many trips there to Sint Maarten.
Link to Tower and Pilot Conversations Arrival and Departure
I found it all to be very touching and emotional, and worthwhile to experience and appreciate.
Link to 747 Arrival
This second video shows the landing and then the subsequent emotional take-off for the historically final flight from Sint Martin to Curaçao. I am personally blown away by how exquisitely beautiful, graceful, and long that plane is, and the blue paint scheme can hardly be beat. I've seen these plans before, of course, many times, but somehow you never really get to see them this clearly when you are a passenger, seeing the plane at an angle from a waiting room window, or entering them from the gangway straight off the terminal gate. I also never fully appreciated how many windows there are, and they go all the way up to the plane's nose. I never was in the upper deck, and that was where the pilots were, too.
That water spray that the plane goes through as it taxis to the runway, at first I thought maybe they were "washing" the plane, but then I decided it was a respectful salute in honor of the plane's long and valuable service. I enjoy hearing the conversation of between the pilot and the men in the tower, seeing the pilots wave from the windshield and the Bye Bye sign in the cockpit window. The pilots express their appreciation to the crowed waiting on the sand, and the man in the tower tells the pilots that they will be missed. There is the take-off with the huge blast of air and the people at the fence and on the beach attempt to hang on. There is such a sense of nostalgia as the plane lifts off and curves away from the island, the very last one of its so many trips there to Sint Maarten.
Link to Tower and Pilot Conversations Arrival and Departure
I found it all to be very touching and emotional, and worthwhile to experience and appreciate.
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